Betsy Alison

Betsy Alison is amongst the more successful racing sailors in the U.S. In August of 2023, she won the Sailing World Championships in the Para Athlete singlehanded class in Holland. This was roughly ten months after having massive surgery on her hip to remove a cancerous tumor. I spoke with Betsy at the US Sailing office in Bristol, RI where she is the Director of Adult Sailing.

© Amory Ross

Coop: Betsy, Hi. How are you doing? Thanks for taking the time out of the day to speak with me.

BA: A pleasure, welcome.

Coop: I read that your early sailing experience comprised your father putting you in a Sunfish and pushing you off the beach. What’s the reality of this piece of lore?

BA: (Chuckles with eye roll) Well, not exactly. Dad was a club sailor and he enjoyed the sport. He had a physical disability where he did not have the use of his right arm. I did not know this as a kid. I had never noticed it nor paid attention to it, but he loved sailing. He and my mom brought a little cottage at the Jersey Shore. The local yacht club, Metedeconk River Yacht Club, was building a new clubhouse across the river from where it had originally existed. Mom and Dad were involved with that early on, and Dad decided that my two brothers and I would learn how to sail. He did not care if we ever raced a day in our lives, but we were going to learn to sail. So that’s how that started. My brothers are two years older and two years younger, so we learned to sail at the same time. I hated it at first because I didn’t know anybody. But as we got to know that group of young sailors, we were at the club all the time. We would be there in the morning, stay all day long and be home for dinner.

Coop: Yup, hanging out with yer mates. Classic sailing stuff.

BA: This grew into one of those things where a bunch of kids would be hanging out, from about seven years old until we were all into our teens. We learned how to sail and how to get along with the other kids. We did club racing and would compete against other club teams. There was North Barnegat Bay and the South Bay. The club was a member of the local yacht racing association and there were Saturday races from June until August.

Coop: Was all this sailing in dinghies?

BA: Completely. In the early years it was Sneakboxes, then M Scows and E Scows were in the afternoon, Lightnings, Penguins, then Lasers, Blue Jays, and MC Scows, but all dinghies. And it has been like this forever. We kids would do the learn to sail at the club, then go on the travel teams to other clubs. This was on Saturdays, then our home club would have its own races on Sundays.

Then as we got older, some of the adult members decided to do an advanced sailing class in Lightnings. Eighteen kids were selected by resume. This group would sail on Thursday evenings and we’d sail in all the different positions. You’d get to steer, trim the main and jib, how to use a kite, all the positions and techniques that went with the position.

The upshot of this was we became a body of really proficient teenage crews invited to sail with the grown-ups in bigger regattas, and we were given the privilege of being able to take some of those boats to the Lightning Youth Championships. Given the opportunity to sail Lightnings at every level from local regattas to North Americans, we became a really tight group. Now, bear in mind high school sailing did not exist the way we know it today. In fact, I had only a few high school friends who sailed at all.

Coop: Gunnel crunching in fiberglass 420s was not a thing…

BA: No, not at all, and there were no Optimists around then. We all just sailed in multiple classes. Any of us could sail solo, doublehanded, triplehanded, and with kites or not. In our generation, learning to sail across multiple boats with varying crew requirements and sail configurations made us much more versatile later on. Because of this “training” we had a wealth of knowledge, because we had to do it all.

Coop: Right. This all sounds very Australian and Kiwi. My dad bought a Sabot (for me), but my mates had examples of the dozen or so Aussie and Kiwi skiff classes, and you could sail any one of four completely different kinds classes of hair-on-fire skiffs in five days. With no high school sailing, what happened next?

BA: I went to Tufts, to study Chemistry, not to sail. The Jumbos had the number one-ranked college team in the country. I had no intention of sailing, but the day I started my freshman year my father died. Friends of friends of my older brother, who was at Tulane, came to my dorm room and said, “Hey, you gotta come down to the lake and go sailing.”

Coop: Ah, the community closes ranks.

BA: I went with them and ended up sailing seven days a week, from September to November and March to May, the college sailing scene. Now, I was not on any coach’s radar and had not recruited, but there were a lot of really good sailors from around the country at Tufts and it was then I realized I had an aptitude for the sport. That was when my sailing trajectory really exploded.

I was coached and mentored by the likes of Joe Duplin, Dave Perry, Kenny Legler and a lot of other really good people, not to mention all my teammates. At that time, I advanced from a seat-of-the-pants sailor to one who understood more of the technical aspects, the theory, the why of sailing and how it works. College sailing was a safe haven for me but at the same time a place where I could really explore other possibilities. For instance, when Tufts did not qualify for Women’s Nationals one year, Dave Perry looked at me and said, “You need to go and get a Laser”. And that was (Looks up and takes one of those, “Was it that long ago?” looks at the ceiling) 1979.

I bought a boat, and my first Laser regatta was with 209 boats in Mantoloking, NJ. It was windy, and I went over to Dave and said, “How do I sail in this?” He said, “Crank everything tight an’ hike hard.” I did and I finished 69th. I thought that was pretty good.

My second regatta was the Women’s Nationals in Rochester, NY. This was the US Sailing Women’s Singlehanded Championships. I really did not know anyone when I arrived, although there were some girls I’d sailed against in college. Well, I won the regatta and qualified for the Worlds. The ISAF Women’s Worlds were also in Rochester, and I finished fifth. This got me thinking, “This might be something I could be good at.”

Oh, and we were sailing Laser regattas at the same time as college sailing. For instance, over spring break, we would go to Florida to the Midwinters and sail Lasers there against a lot of really good college sailors. And we had no coaches, there were no coach RIBs zooming around the fleet. Getting better was all on you. We would come in and sit around and discuss the racing. Someone would say, “You were fast in this condition. What were you doing? How was the boat set up?” ■

Look for Part 2 of Coop’s interview with Betsy in June!